Last year I uploaded this image of Apache warriors on Twitter with the description that it was my wife's family getting ready to celebrate Columbus Day. My wife's family includes Native Americans, and given our nation's history I thought I was being cleverly ironic.
Bad taste? Perhaps. But I also think when we celebrate a holiday that was created in 1937 as a political ploy to secure Italian-American votes, we should devote at least some energy to remember that what Columbus really "discovered" wasn't what he was looking for, nor was the "New World" an uninhabited Eden, free for the taking by European explorers.
What happened in the Americas over the subsequent 400 years was nothing less than the conquest and suppression, and in many cases, the annihilation of Native American populations already living here. Europe and European settlers obtained land and wealth while the indigeneous people misnamed "Indians" were subjected to treatment not dissimilar to that visited upon European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
Genocide is not too strong a term to describe the impact of white European/American culture on Indians. Nor have its long-term effects been limited to North American native populations. I have a cousin who worked as a stringer (news correspondent) for Reuters news agency in the 60s. He lived in Venezuela at the time, married a woman from that country and had a child. In the early 60s the Venezuelan government decided to sell parcels of land in the Amazon River basin. The land was wilderness, completely undeveloped, inaccessible for the most part except by water and air, offered at low prices "as is."
My cousin decided the land might be a good investment, so he investigated the proposition. He learned that indigenous people already occupied much of the the available land, and he asked how their occupation would be handled. He was told by a government representative that once the land was sold it was the owner's responsibility to deal with the Indians however he saw fit... pay them, evict them, eliminate problems by any means necessary. In the 1960s.
My cousin didn't buy.
The point is, there are two sides to the Columbus Day coin. One is decorated with parades and platitudes regarding Manifest Destiny and the myths surrounding the glorious age of European exploration and civilization. The other is awash in blood and broken promises, promises whose abrogation continues to haunt us... all of us.
Happy Columbus Day? Depends on how good your memory is, I suppose.
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